The Big Car Hussle

It's going to happen. A 1m89cm guy is going to be driving around in a Dihatsu Cuore soon.
I might have to cut a hole in the roof but hey, it's summer anyway.

Little more cash, little less spending

I am lucky for being employed at a stable employer. Of course, no more need for employment is one of my long term goals (starting with no longer being financial dependent on work but being able to pick the jobs I like for how long I like them), but untill that day comes I can't really complain. If I do my job I'm supposed to do I get a small raise every year, and with our company having a new collective work agreement everyone will get 3,2% more from this day on and another 1% next year february.

This leaves me with the possibility to pay off more of my debt. I am thinking about raising the step up to 600 a month, where this was 500 a month. I think this will hardly be a difference in my current budget / spending, but over the next 18 months I still have to go that will mean I'm done about 3 months earlier.

Be careful what you wish for

Remember my last post, stating "this car will never ever fail on me"? Well. It did.
Not some major issue that got fixed for around 500 euro's. Still hurts, but my emergency fund had no problem fixing that.

Yet ever since I calculated my possible savings by changing cars of quit driving a car completely this has been on my mind. Not like a light breeze but like one hell of a big hammer hitting me in the head every time I blinked my eyes.

By simply switching cars I can save >1K yearly. That means 50K over the next 50 years. That seriously adds up. Even if this new vehicle gives up on me every 5 years that would still be profitable. And as I stated above... even a Volvo can break down.

Kill 'em!

I am on the move. As you can see in the debt-O-meter and the graph at the right I nailed my 2K down payment a month ahead. Saves me 10 bucks in the end lowering interest payments. I must admit, being down for a couple of weeks because of the confronting financial review and the clouds above my head until the end of next year seems to have moved on into seeing the beauty of recognition of my situation in the current world. Where they dark clouds, I can now see how they will slowly (truth, very slowly) begin to dissolve into a beautiful debt free blue sky.

Life costs per second

With my current investigtions and spreadsheet it occured to me I could quite easily calculate what my life costs me per second nowadays. Turns out, my current yearly budget (in which I am trying to get out of debt and without saving really anything) my life right now costs me 0,107 cent every second. Even though that sounds like hardly anything, this adds up to 6 cents a minute; 3,86 an hour (still seems like nothing) yet this ups to an mindblowing 92,66 per day!

With me glued to my screen for the past tho days reading a very interesting blog of a man capable of living of only around 500 a month, paid through rents he gets paid from property he bought after a couple of years of hard labour and frugal living while only somehere in his mid twenties this makes me very, very aware of the fact that I, at 33 right now and still only paying of a debt and hardly saving, am ages behind.

Couldn't sleep

So. This is new. With me trying to get up every morning at 6:30AM (and hopelesly failing at a rate of 50%) I woke up this morning at 4:15. Morning? Middle of the night I guess.
I woke up out of a weird dream which had something to do with me gathering funds from anywhere to pay of my loans.

After whooling around in my bed for almost an hour I just couldn't stand it anymore and got out of bed. Strangely enough my body feels quite awake. Maybe it's a new rhythm setting in; maybe it's the stress and worry about getting debt free. And I'm fairly sure its the latter since I don't feel calm at all lately.

First big downpayment! (And it hurts...)

So. This week, my tax reduction came in. And, as I promised myself, I would use this and a partion of my vacation fee, to make an extra downpayment next month. But, since I already have the money to do so, I made the transaction today. In the end, this will save me a little more interest and every bit helps! 

This was the first time I got a litte "extra cash" which I immediately transferred into the bottomless pithole called "debt" and I must say, it feels strange. Yes, I do feel the joy of reducing my debt by a total of 2K this month. But on the other hand, it also feels uncomfortable because normally this kind of extra cash would give me a little more breathing space in my savings account and could make me do some fun things.

Fun things. That's interesting because when I think of it, last years where years where I didn't go on a long summer holiday or bought a new car (or something like that). So what DID I do with my money back then?